The City in July

2011-04-24T09:30:00.003+05:30

2011-04-17T01:28:00.005+05:30

February Rhyme / Lines for a Boy

2011-02-28T21:03:00.001+05:30

I see you now, in your winter-sun prison,
Your head full of music and sting like a bee;
There's spring at your window but spring will not touch you --
The frost in your bones will alone here decree.

I see you now, with your anger like Moses,
Your nations of roses sprout thorns in the night.
When your staff turns to dust you will laugh 'cuz you must
Trick the sharks and the sirens who thirst for your plight.

I see you now and you smile like a soldier,
You look so much older than before the wars;
You've learnt how to hide your remorse and your pride
And dismantle your godheads and burn down your stars.

October Blues

2010-10-20T01:28:00.003+05:30

Blues catch like cold (but untold and forlorn).
And you sniffle a little, then freeze into stone
On your park bench where (flaming and swirling around)
The leaves that don’t touch you will rain on to ground;
Till the children and housewives and candyfloss men
With their lazy cries, crazy lies save you again.

A Song for September

2010-09-21T02:14:00.003+05:30

Sit and watch, sit and watch
Till it comes for you: a tiny tune
With a tilted hat and sad moustache
And crimson heart hastily sewn
Upon the sleeve. Do receive
Its clumsy fingers in your own;
Lend it a small rhyme to weave
Dancing rain in autumn-blown
Branches, pavements, cloudy streets;
Rise and take it by the hand,
Twirl it round to the beat
And play it with a marching band.

And I'll Dance with You in Vienna

2009-11-22T15:56:00.006+05:30

The morning glittered. Below at the square a solitary man was sweeping the red-yellow leaves with a long-handled broom, its bristles going crip-crip-crip on the flagstones as they raised a small cloud of dust at his feet. In the houses round the square children and menfolk were awakening and ambling downstairs for the breakfast their women had been preparing for the last half-hour; soon they would be wiped and dressed and released in the streets like a fresh outbreak of plague into the sharp autumn air. Oh humanity, how you never tired of yourself!

The Black Death was sucking the marrow out of this city. The sweet, squalid stench of death crept in like spices through its narrow streets, its markets bustling with silk and relics and oriental curiosities, the thick baroque walls of its buildings ceaselessly splendid, ceaselessly crumbling. It is an ignominious end for a city that has for centuries held the obsession of many a heart gallant, pure, ambitious or merely grandiosely delusional: men who commanded the fates of their times. Glorious Vienna! Desire and disease of the heart! Last night when he had set fire to that decrepit hospital it was less with the immediate need to escape his past – oh, a past he would never escape, and had he not always known? – than with the intention to give you a final, glorious farewell in the blazes, noble Vienna!

But the ancient city had rejected his gift, had been too damp to go up like the greatest fireworks display in the history of mankind. The fire had entirely razed down the hospital building, snuffing out every one of its inmates, but had hardly spread beyond five or six houses on either side. Even the street itself lay utterly unannihilated. (It shamed him to compare this skirmish to Pompeii; to speak nothing of the overused clichés of Sodom and Gomorrah, though he had not been present at either occasion. But even London, that great, vulgar cesspit, had shined brighter against the night barely a decade ago.) Men and women had scurried out in their underclothes and created a great hue and cry while the hospital burnt; but he knows, knows only too soon they would get over this puny accident. No use shedding precious tears over those who were fated to burn at the pits sooner or later; no one ever survived the Black Death. Of greater regret was the loss of the doctors – so few of them to go around in these accursed times – and especially the mysterious foreign healer whose fame had begun to spread through the fetid disease chambers, they said he could wring a man back from the bony clutches of the Reaper himself. But it did not bode well to trust these travelling foreigners too implicitly, who knew what devil they had sold their souls to, perhaps it was good that he had not been sighted since the breakout of the fire. Better for him to have been one of the corpses in the interiors of the building, mangled into each other beyond recognition, than to have miraculously escaped. The people could lament for him freely then.

Legs solemnly crossed, he sat on one of the rooftops surrounding the square at the other end of the city. He was a fifteen-year-old boy in his shirtsleeves and breeches, with a mop of chestnut hair and a button nose. Behind him, in the backyard of the house, a maple tree gently dispersed flaming leaves with every touch of breeze. A hint of ice in this breeze, ice from the caves and fjords of the north, his homelands; this breeze had brought with it his father; this breeze, then, his parting knell from this city. Fare thee well, charming, ungrateful Vienna, so decayed, so resplendent in the grandeur of your fall! A few minutes more in communion with this monstrosity and then he would climb down from this rooftop, find his way to the marketplace and buy himself a loaf of bread and blue-veined cheese to break the night’s long fast.

Not yet, but soon, he would require a new name.

---

Medusa Medusa Medusa

2009-09-26T21:53:00.003+05:30

I'm trying to lure the darkness

of your soul with my

own. What else is there

to give? Everything

I touch turns to dust, my people

to bubble and smoke, my

memories nothing but

ceaseless words and

skin. I forget

my lies, I do not

remember my craft,

The morning finds me bereft of dreams.

I am stone.

unfinished poetry.

2009-05-30T10:30:00.001+05:30

i started writing this poem in april and then moved on to other things. i don't think i'll be able to return to it any more, so for whatever it's worth, here:

---

Of all that hold me accused, this

I know: my youth is spent

on strangers. I have flung my

heart at tramps and travelling soldiers,

wayward boys under lamplights, greying

men at railstations with their

untold lives of embers and sweetness

and sorrow.

---

Burying Love

2008-11-02T23:59:00.002+05:30

I have sat up with the dead
all night, inhaling incense all
night, an attempted illusion
of flowers.

You do not speak ill of the dead, perhaps
out of reverence, or guilt, or
shame, for how important
are the wounds that you hide
compared to what lies before you,
transcendental.
You do not question
the act of passing, or allude to
its resemblance to escape.

And you pick only
the white flowers, carefully
averting your eyes from the red,
for the dead must be
buried in peace, left
without a stain of mortality
at all.

And you hope, maybe then, the dead
will leave you alone.

Words not intended to be poetry

2008-04-20T23:59:00.001+05:30

I don't know why I'm writing this down.

I made these stars and put
them in your eyes so that they
sparkle when they gaze at me and I
can feel a little like a goddess.

This is a bit like confession, and
it's stupid because I can't
rhyme or reason or create
coherence for all to see all I
do is shuffle these pictures in my mind - a
dark brown foot in a neon-lit room perhaps
or the curve of a smile.

If I asked you to yield all your secrets
what would you show me? Would you
show me the rawness of sinew the bleak-
ness of thoughts would you shatter
away all walls and suck me in so deep so
deep that all that remains of me is a
tint in your blood a tune
in your head that you cannot
hum cannot forget?

This is a bit like confession and it's
meaningless really like when you drop to
your knees in the rain hands clasped in fervent
prayer although you never knew a god
or scripture, you make up the words as if
words were your only escape, a hopeless
poet without a purpose, a child
with nowhere to go.

And the abyss gazes into you then and you
become a little like the abyss and then
a little more and what's
wrong in that is it that you cannot
break into flowers anymore?

This is the bit like confession and
it's absurd because I look for
songs in crashing silence because this
flesh requires no words no music no rhythm
in iridiscence
in bursting in flames like insane super-
novas they
need not create
art.

And love is just a four-letter word and
so is fuck and so is fool how far
did you believe in those stories they
told you as a kid what
is it that makes you sleep now?

And so, you know, this
is a bit like confession but it's
made to make no sense to you
or you or anyone of you, I
don't know why I'm writing
this down
at all.

Littleboypoem

2008-02-20T20:38:00.004+05:30

What poetry do I write for you? How well
do you elude rhyme - too silly, too
trivial too clumsy to gather
in words. Poetry for you must be
poetry for winter afternoons, paper
cups of watery coffee and
half-burnt cigarette
aftertaste in your mouth. Poetry for
you, as you shake your hair
loose in the evenings, your
eyes like chasing fire-
flies in the dark. You, in pictures
with laughing strangers, caught
in the corner of the frame - the little
mad boy. You, quietly
sneaking into dreams.

Poetry for you must be played on guitars
at night on a terrace, over conver-
sations on sparkly blue
fish in the sky. Poetry for you
will stop in mid-line
and laugh at itself
for pointlessness.

Poetry
for you will never suffice,
like the awkward gap between
laughters, when words are
too wrong. Poetry for you, like
so many things to be said
and so few excuses to start. Poetry
for too little time before we
forget, poetry for you
must be silence.

Your Ex-Lover is Dead (draft)

2008-01-10T19:55:00.000+05:30

It started with a rrrrring.
This dawn is like ice and water-
colour pink outside my window, my
walls still dark and this morning
started with a ring.
They didn't need
to tell me but they called, they are
thoughtful that way.

Your ex-lover is dead.

Do you remember, was it another
birth when you bunked maths
tuition to watch him play at a fest his
friends so much older the little park by your
school where he touched his tongue
to your wrist that icecream
guy in the corner you
thought was Father
Christmas? Do you still hide
your blush when a passing
classmate mentions his name oh
when did you grow up
so much?

They didn't need to tell you but they
called. Your ex-lover is dead.

In a fit of summernight passion I had
given you all my childhood
dreams all my empty hours in
return of your
smile your silly schoolboy smile the pool
of sweat glistening in the hollow
of your throat. I was a child,
thoughtless and now
I cannot rest, these afternoons
make me shudder like a broken
conchshell I cannot hear my
footsteps anymore I have
bartered them for glitter glitter
glitter faded so long ago.

They didn't need to tell me that my ex-
lover is dead.

If I didn't exist, would you have
dreamed me?
I had dreamed you, I
built you up like a scrapbook with
memories, crumpled cigarette paper and
markerpen rainbows, built you up
till you were unreal, like dream, built
you up till my grubby fingers
could not touch you. So much star-
dust one could go blind! But now
you live in other people's dreams, a
stranger, or are they your
own? Dreams I do not recog-
nize, fingers that have sought salvation
in the voluptous perfume of many
other skins, washing over my sixteen-
year-old chewing gum
aftertaste since. As have I, as I
cannot imagine the timbre
of your voice on my phone anymore, there's
nothing left to owe or return, we are
strangers.

They didn't need to tell me, I knew
my ex-lover was dead.

And who let you in here this
morning leaning against the dark of the wall
your arrogant eyes undoing my drowsy
languor, accusing
accusing of what, what
right do you have to
demand? I turn my eyes away and there's
the smell of blood in my
room, your merciless grin hangs
in my air and there are
tears, scorching, tears I
refuse to cry. Who let you here
in my head, you, half-wasted
teenage narcissus, who
let you become the demon I cannot forget?

They didn't need to tell me but
they called. They are
thoughtful
that way.

All the things you don't know

2007-10-13T13:03:00.000+05:30

this being my humble attempt at writing juvenile, schoolgirl emo poetry.

---

You don't know, I've been
playing with knives here. You
don't know. A game I keep
on repeating, impro-
vising, building on and on in different
words and moves, trying
to reach the bone
marrow, so it hurts; and I still
can't feel my insides throb
against the blue blade
in response.

In the car beneath your window
I've been choosing my men - some
with their fingers long, like music,
a few with eyes like deception,
some of them like shamans, raising
the dead with their words; crawling,
aching to touch.
The charade tires me sometimes.
In the car beneath your
window, I sit and watch
your mother, your baby
brother who smiles like you, slow,
infectious like poison, he dares, and I
despise his guts. In this car
beneath your window, I've been
waiting for you to come pull the blinds,
on a powercut evening so you can see
the sky behind me is purple. On a power-
cut evening, a candle in your
hands, your eyes flickering light. Your eyes
like deserted streets, like the dirt
in your soul, the fertile
dirt I want to mix into my
body and become
flowers, trees.

When these books these bars this Friday
night music fail, I've been
keeping my eye on you, swinging
your way down the corridor
the sun right behind your head, your hair
wild, flying, your body
like wildflower-
beds, you become the fuckin' Saviour - the boy
with the red guitar.

And you don't know, I've been hallu-
cinating nights here, entire nights
of writing mad poetry to you. You don't
know, boy-child, protected, adored,
that I walk through the shadows at
dusk, streaking them violent
blue, waiting for storm.
You don't know.

(Too chaotic to have a title)

2007-07-03T23:59:00.000+05:30

You live like a song inside my head.
All loves are not meant for eternity - I have
lived you, I have inhaled you like
poison till you were nothing but music
and sin.

Goodbyes are harder. I don't want to
hold your hand to the airport, kiss
you off to other people's dreams. I
will steal you away to the untamed heart
of the Bundelkhand, to the red stone
ruins of primitive temples, I will
mix you with earth and ash till your body
blazes like the midland sun.
I will chant your name to the rocks
and thorny crags, till you
are a nascent god.

But now, I have returned
to the town I was born, to the dead
end of the street, the decrepit
house of my parents, the familiar stench
of whiskey and clutter and tuberose and
no love. My days are spent
like a stale newspaper. On wasted, hungover
mornings, I am a caged animal
in pain, when the circus
tents are pulled down. Blinded by thirst, I claw
and claw through this numbness, till
my whole consciousness is only
the bass of your voice, the universe
folds itself into the shape of your
tongue, your words my only
salvation.

I don't even hear the words. It's your
voice that fills my fevered brain
and lulls me to sleep.

I tremble.

I cannot remember how far behind
I lost you, how long ago. These midnights
frighten me. Hold me against
your chest till these hallu-
cinations pass, hush me when my frenzied
words break into terror, terror, I can
take no more. Whisper your name in my
ears, until
faith is reborn.

Live
like a song inside my head.

Notes from another city

2007-05-28T15:03:00.000+05:30

written, in bits and pieces, at night in a hotel room at bangalore, between the thirteenth chapter of the master and margarita. it's not entirely fiction, for i didn't make up all of it. neither is it quite faithful journalising, and it has nothing to do with literature. well i can possibly call it a letter. of the sort i used to write to people i loved, before we walked away and became cooler and forgot everything.

---

So let me take you down that alley. Off the ever-bustling road, the business district, away from the English-speaking cosmopolitan crowd, far from the crowd, on an afternoon of clouds and no breeze. Your mouth is red from gulping wine since the morning in the hotel room, alone, in your underwear, deliriously reciting neruda to the patch of rainsky from the window. Your throat is dry, your lips parched, you long for a stretched-out kiss to moisten your stinging tongue. So let me.

This city is very green, unexplored and green, it makes you drunk. Those cool shady patches that you discover, where you sit for hours singing, drawling lines from dylan and leonard cohen, in your drunk voice, your eyes distant like a madman. Here, you don't understand the language they speak. Yes, they will possibly answer back when you address them in the universal, formal tongue, but when they speak among themselves, all you can register is the distinct music of how the words fall, quite differently from your own mothertongue. And you adore it... it's a strange kind of freedom - this not having to hear, know, understand what you don't need to. Not running the risk of spoiling your perfect afternoon by the sudden furious urge to punch the face of the guy in the street who just passed a remark about your woman's breasts. Not experiencing that nauseating feeling of overhearing the people at the streetside shop whisper about Bong wankers as you slurp through your food. It's freedom. You love the way it tastes in your mouth, you savour it till it's intoxicating and sweet.

And so let me take you down that alley. Off the ever-bustling road, the business district, away from the English-speaking cosmopolitan crowd, far from the crowd, on an afternoon of clouds and no breeze. Let me take you down that alley, to that hidden, special book shop in the corner, down its dark, high firstfloor shelves of old musty volumes... there, under the gaze of rows of yellowed Petrarchs and Byrons and Beowulfs,

let us make love.

Lovenote to a stranger

2007-02-15T14:10:00.000+05:30

why have you drifted so far away
from my body, the scent of your sweat
faded from my teeshirt why have you
slipped away so silent so cold beyond
the words the walls the reach
of grasping fingers the animal
thirst of blinded hours

The demons have choked in my head, the doorways
lost. The streets where your breath
swelled like the ocean wind, filling cries
of seagulls and unborn children in my head... the streets
have been devoured by mist, as if
they never were. As if you never were
the ancient god
of storms and frenzied prayers
and secret shrines; as if you never
spread the night sky around my shoulders,
your body - feverish, bright - burning like stars.
Tell me why I can't
recognize your name anymore, why your body
has become a land I have never tread - my streets
devoured by mist, as if they never were.
Why did you let me drift
so far away
that I cannot return?

For I still
nurse the ghost of you
in my mind, like a hidden madness, an
imaginary wound... so far, so
unreal that nothing
can ever touch you
no love
no tears
no blood

The Wind Song (draft)

2006-09-14T12:05:00.000+05:30

There's a song in the wind
There are words.

The south wind roars
deep, aloud
swirls
in giant waves
over her hut where the river ends.
Tonight she will soak her hair in the wind
and sleep beneath the stars.

And in a damp little room
In a damp little city
Alone
A wordless poet struggles for breath
Where the wind doesn't reach
Lungs and craving arteries
Empty, blank.

Tell me who unleashed the city
over this landscape
Stretched it like an unrolling carpet
rugged with time,
rugged
so,
if you reach beneath the surface
you will
feel the grass and the mud and the soul.
Tell me who it is the city awaits.

And tell me who entrapped the poet
in this body
diseased,
dying,
devoid of blood
And tell me who confined the poet
in this mind
lost for words, lost for
thought, lost
for belief.
Tell me
who cursed the poet
to untimely death.

"Beloved, there is no god
within these walls
No sight, no solace, no
respite. - I cannot dream..."
I cannot sleep
these days,
no more, I wait
for the seagull's scream
above my head, I
wait
for the gales to blow
away the floor,
The dust will sparkle.

But was she the nymph
of the south winds, some aeons ago,
do you know when she forgot her name?
Do you know if the city smog
chokes her, if the chains still
bruise her ankles, or where
does the yellow cab take
her every night?

The computer has fallen silent, the cell-
phone the footsteps and
so will the clock and
the heartbeat
soon - Talk to me!
I yearn for voice talk to me
Talk to me about anything
everything the grass the
soul the cliff the hut your father
who left for the wind
and never returned...
how she lured him to sea.

And why
does the yellow cab take her
every night
to the abandoned graveyard
whose ancient bones
does she try to sooth
with her gentle fingers
of breeze?

This city was not built
for the winds.
I wonder
how they forgot
that the river
leads to the sea, and
the sea to the winds.
And one day
the winds will steal
the men the songs the souls

And when I die, sit
by my grave for a while
and plant me a krishnachura.
Plant it such that every breeze
will shower
petals like sunset
petals like blood
I shall be
red.

I shall be red.

Extract

2006-04-11T10:54:00.000+05:30

I would like you to die this
moment, before the glares and sneers
and prejudices can find you and
drag you out to the dawn, seething;
before their greedy fangs dig blood
on the flesh of your back; I would like you
to die and become a sacred memory,
a phantom fragrance, a summer night
dream I can hide in the darkest
spires of my eyes... I would
like you to die in my arms - still
warm, unscathed, pure.

...

Asking you out on a winter night

2006-02-05T23:59:00.000+05:30

Tell me, if I asked for
a part of you tonight, would you
let me take a sip of that thunderstorm
raging through the shores of your heart?
Tell me – I ask you
for your city of dust and ashes, those
congested streets that you love, the ideals
of your forefathers; your dream, dark and looming,
transcending bodies and time... your dream,
dark and looming, that lends you blood
and wings.

I ask you for the hunger of your people, rising,
like a ghost in the colour of your eyes;
for your chaotic memories, crowded
with scruffy old men, shrivelled women, children
with begging bowls, lives lived
and died on footpaths, closed-down factories whose
rotting gates reek of blood. I ask
for your path of fire – pre-destined – scrawled
over a piece of paper.

And I ask for your whirlwind evenings, the usual games,
cigarette-end conversations with ladies
with strange surnames; your nights
of careless passion; and the
emptiness singeing your soul, as you walk
out of yet another lover's door on a stagnant dawn.

And at a rhythmless moment - you look
behind, your head tilted like half-sculpted
marble (the rest of you still
undone), your hair thick sheets of rain
over your shoulders, and your reflection
filling you with the bitterness
of a disenchanted traveller, who realizes
that the horizon has eluded him
again. And at
a rhythmless moment, when you think
your soul defeated and lost – I ask for those thoughts.

Tell me, if I asked for a part of
you tonight, would you let me hold
your hands, moulded from centuries of soil
and song? Would you place them – expressive and
warm – on my hips; would they
melt, with a drowning
madness, within my flesh and self?
Tell me, if I asked for a part of you tonight,
would you let me
Become
a part of you?

55 word story - Untitled

2005-10-23T04:15:00.000+05:30

Untitled

My terrace was blue and grey in the smoke from your eyes. Not for the first time did we pretend to hear each other's voice, while all that resonated in the balsam twigs was our love lamenting what was left of us. There wasn't much. It didn't hurt me to kiss you any more.

55 word story - Eyes

2005-10-23T04:14:00.000+05:30

Eyes

Too many eyes I've lost – some have bled so much I couldn't see any other colour. I rather like the pair I have now. Grey, smoky, plunging into such a wilderness that I shudder even as I gaze into the mirror. They call them eyes of an addict.

There's no way I'm losing them on you.

Doll's Houses

2005-10-09T19:05:00.000+05:30

She sat in front of the mirror. The single crack that trickled down the shining glass might have been a tear drop dried, a silvery illusion. Might have been midnight hours kept by passing moons in dark, breathless streets. Might have been the way her gaze held his trail of dust and ashes.

Doll's houses don't last, her mother would tell her, back in her frock-wearing, candy-licking childhood. Those days, she believed in growing up. But round the corner, even the conch shells and primeval drum rhythms that hailed the divine mother would fall silent as the Dashami sunset pours its vermillion over the festivity-worn city. And her! She hadn't even felt Eternity ripple down the manicured brown of her fingertips. Not Durga, not Mahamaya... after all, what was she but just another squalid doll?

A poem by Aakash and The Response of the Pool

2005-09-24T00:48:00.001+05:30

Right there...

Inside your closed eyes
Let me watch my n'th dream
Beneath the shadow of your lashes
I shall rest for a while

Let your brow play my tired soul
A lullaby off-white
Seeking within the iris black
The eloped darkness of night

While i seek sleep...

- Aakash

The Response of the Pool

And the eloped darkness of the night
Gives way to a dawn
That re-opens the circle -
My cold grave is dug again.

As I open my eyes
I am doused
In the crimson sundrops
Streaming...
Screaming for reasons
In the seething black of the iris
In the fading shadow of the lashes...

I

2005-09-23T02:30:00.000+05:30

It's not the dagger in my chest that hurts me. It's the fact that you put it there. Rainclouds come and go, the marble of the gravestone forgets my name... and beneath a field of carnations, my bones grow whiter. The scent of lavender seeps heavier into my soul.

The scent of lavender. The scent of madness. The scent of emptiness. Ahh... pour me into that void. Pour me slowly, down your dead, white fingers. Let me drip... drip... drip... till the last droplet dries from the vessel. And no fragrance is left.

The music has struck its highest note, and then the guitar strings split. Now, only the drum beats on. Primitive. Monotonic.

This is not love.
This is not love.

It's something beyond.

Pain is my addiction.

Insanities

2005-09-22T01:16:00.000+05:30

I could've been the desire in your eyes, and stayed like that forever. Bathed in the seething fragrance of your body. Breathed in the red dust of your soul. Spilled in the liquid rudeness of your purple gaze.

Let me drown
Let me drown
Let me drown

I bloom like the last finger of jasmine on your stormy nights.

Esmeralda

2005-09-12T12:22:00.000+05:30

Esmeralda

Oh yet another dance
One more waltz
Clasping your hand in mine
As fireflies plunge to flames
And we play games
Drawing patterns with fingers of ice
On each other's walls,
Walls of the stormy city
We built
Together

Through the nights of winds
And blind moths in your hair
Through the raindrop haze
On the skylight
I hold out for the thirsty hour
You craved
For a drop of Eternity
On the blood-red curve of your lips
The curve beyond which
An obscure street
An ignorant crowd
Breathing, writhing, seething
Asks -
"And how many years
And how many tears
Would you waste
Locked in a forbidden love?"

What if,
Then the violins stop
Then the curtains drop...

Would your footfall recede
From the spot
The sunset was spilled
Like red wine on the dancefloor?

But the rain pours on
Through the night and fog
Incessant
Like the insane mutterings
Of a lover in throes of pain
All the lovers we left behind
At another space
In another time
Embracing Life and Death
In a whirlwind swish
Becoming
You and me

Tonight
The paradise we seek has drifted
In the moss-grown woods
That layer the city
Brimming, spilling
The droplet of poison in the veins
Reaching for the heart,
Iced blood...
And the violins stopped
And the curtains dropped

Blackout.

...And I
Hold out for the thirsty hour
You craved
For a drop of Eternity
For a drop of Eternity

For the last dance that's left.

A Lost Friend's Letter

2005-08-09T17:40:00.001+05:30

A poem I wrote for my best friend for Friendship Day. Doesn't mean I care much about such occassions though, but our relationship was just going through a rift and it felt somewhat ironic that an occassion called 'Friendship Day' would be around the corner...
It was published in Young Metro, The Telegraph on Friday, August 5.

---

Perhaps some street-side poet
had written you a song
of fallen stars
and twilight half-dreams
long before the centuries came...
Through the nights of sublime pearls,
deep, dark, insane nights,
have you heard the phantoms weep
at your doorstep?

And as your fingers touch the notes
of the lonely piano,
a shadow still lingers on your wall
...waiting for a lost friend's letter.

The Last Performance

2005-07-08T04:50:00.000+05:30

Perhaps the curtains will rise
for the last time tonight,
and the void of your drowsy dawn
will be me.
I will don the myriad shades
of a scripted life,
and on the jovial stage,
in the arclight haze,
I will flash plastic smiles
to tunes that were never my own.

When the empty proscenium
reeks of phantom songs,
I have walked the deserted aisles in white satin,
looking for the poet who died,
in a freak accident,
maybe in another space or time.
I found his diary last night...

But tonight (for the hundredth night)
I'll dance my candyfloss steps,
light ballerina feet will defeat
my purpose to live or die.
To want to fly.
Perhaps they sheared off the wings
I had, in another incarnation.

Don't paint me another facade,
write me another role.
I'll take my poison
in small doses,
licking around my lips.
I'll grow spurious leaves
from the pupils of my eyes,
the million eyes
that sprawl on my skin.
And maybe for the last time,
I'll die.

Perhaps the curtains will rise
for the last time tonight,
and the void of your drowsy dawn
will be me.
Silent dreamer, would you then
play me a song
of yellow and green,
of green and red,
red and violet,
with your magic breath?
And maybe,
as the thundering applause fades,
we will find a new sky.

Nights

2005-06-09T03:20:00.001+05:30

There's this person up there with whom I share a very intense love-hate relationship. I refuse to believe in It's existence (don't know if It's a He or She), and It responds by making a joke out of everything I say or do. And when the thing gets over I return to my belief of "What It-wit crap? Coincidences happen."
Anyway, so only tonight I was writing about not being able to complete a poem. And only tonight, a bit later, my muse got so worked up that I conceived and completed an entire poem in less than half an hour. Of course the poem, at its best, looks like a child practising metaphors. But that's generally what my poems are like. Without any concrete meaning. Surrealistic. They probably have some meaning at the Freudian level of the subconscious self, but trust me, reading one's own subconscious is the toughest job - so I won't really be able to tell you accurately. Some deep pain, some deep loss, some deep isolation somewhere down there maybe... otherwise just a simple poem. Just playing with words. Just a few abstract sketches.

---

Last night,
I lost the violin man
at the bend of a purple street
under the cracked lamp.

Haven't I trailed the shadows,
seen them crisscross
in a midnight maze?
I have fixed my gaze
at the bluish monitored screen
and clicked erase.

If the rooftops will
sing your lost tune tonight,
I'll buy
half a star
and let it twinkle twinkle
on my cheek...

And I will step in the stream
and sniff the home-bound wind
for your music
...for yet another night.

Written on June 8, 2005.